Ordinances that would have increased water and sewer rates split the Mountain Home City Council 4-4 on Thursday night, leaving the proposed rate increases to fail for lack of a council majority.

Council members deadlocked on proposals to raise the city’s water and sewer rates by 1.8 percent for both residential and commercial customers. The Council also reached an impasse on raising the cost of wholesale water the city sells to surrounding water systems.

Council members Carl Graves, Rick Pierce, Jennifer Baker and Nancy Osmon each voted in favor of each proposal, while fellow council members Wayne Almond, Don Webb, David Almond and Eva Frame voted against each proposal.

Mayor pro tem Brian Plumlee, who was leading the meeting in lieu of an out-of-town Mayor Joe Dillard, declined to cast a tiebreaking vote on each proposal.

“I’ll say this: I don’t know in this capacity, if I should be voting for what Joe may or may not want,” Plumlee said.

The Mountain City Council has eight council members; a majority of five must approve a proposed ordinance for it to succeed. In the event of a tie vote, the mayor can cast a decisive vote if they choose to do so.

A 1.8 percent increase in water and sewer rates would have seen an in-city customer using the city minimum 2,000 gallons or less paying an additional 55 cents per month. An in-city residential customer using 4,500 gallons a month would see an increase of 83 cents.

A commercial customer using the monthly minimum would have seen an increase of 90 cents each month, while that same commercial customer using 4,500 gallons a month would see an increase of $1.18.

The updated ordinance regarding the cities wholesale water prices would have seen those water systems paying around 15 cents more per 1,000 gallons purchased.

Water sold to the Northeast Public Water Authority would have been charged at $4.04 per 1,000 gallons, an increase of 13 cents per 1,000 gallons sold. Water sold to either Gassville or Cotter would have been charged at $4.42 per 1,000 gallons, an increase of 16 cents. Wholesale water sold to the Lakeview/Midway Public Water Authority would have been charged at $4.83 per 1,000 gallons, an increase of 17 cents per 1,000 gallons sold.

A 2016 rate study on the city’s water and sewer rates indicated the city needed a 9-percent increase in its water rates and a 20-percent increase in its sewer rates.

Council members voted to adjust the city’s water and sewer rates based on a yearly “cost of living” consumer index published by the federal government, saying that smaller, incremental increases would be better than a sudden, sharp rate increase. In 2017, the first year under the cost-of-living scale, council members approved a 2-percent increase in water and sewer rates for residential and commercial customers.

Mountain Home’s wholesale contracts with surrounding water authorities permit the city to charge the cost of production and delivery plus 10 percent and is updated yearly. The last wholesale water rate increase was in June 2016; no wholesale rate increase was adopted in 2017 because the city was involved in a lawsuit with the Northeast Public Water Authority on how the city calculated its expenses.